By Request, a recipe: Tragedy Chicken

This is a tasty chicken meal that takes about an hour to cook, but almost no prep time.  It’s a bit sweet, and slightly spicy, but you can adjust to taste.

Ingredients

  • As many chicken thighs as you and your table will eat
  • 1 Tsp / thigh medium or mild mango chutney
  • (about 1/2 tsp per 4 tsp chutney) ground chipotle pepper
  • (about 1 tsp per 4 tsp chutney) sweet paprika

Directions

Preheat oven to 220°C (broil / grill setting).  Place chicken in a baking dish, and broil chicken for five minutes to seer skin.  Remove chicken and reduce oven temp to 180°C (bake setting with fan or about 190° without fan).  Cover dish and replace chicken in oven.  Cook for 25 minutes with fan or 35 without.  While chicken is cooking, mix remaining ingredients in a bowl.  Remove chicken from oven, and increase temperature to 195 with fan, or 210 without.  Spread mixture evenly over all pieces, and replace chicken in oven uncovered for ten minutes.  Remove and serve with potatos and a vegetable.

Guess Who Thinks He’s Running for President

Bureau of EconomicsIt’s January 25th, and President Obama has been in office for only a few days, and it seems as though there is jockeying for the Republican nomination for 2012.  Here is how it works: take one of President Obama’s or Congress’ new and somewhat popular initiatives, and bet against it – heavily – by criticizing it in every which way you can and being an obstacle.  You know you’ll eventually lose the battle that the initiative will go through, but then if it doesn’t work, you can claim “I told you so.”  Doubly down if the initiative the economic stimulous package, because even if it does work, you can claim that the economy would have recovered in spite of it, and now the deficit is larger.

This is precisely the tact currently being taken by Senator John Cornyn of Texas.  And he’s gone further by challenging the appointments of Hillary Clinton to Secretary of State, and Eric Holder to Attorney General.

There are risks with this strategy.  First of all, if they are simply mowed over, and the policies are effective, the Democrats will enjoy popularity for a recovering economy.  if the obstruction works, and the economy doesn’t improve, then the Democrats can weild that failure against the Republicans – again – in 2010.

But I have a simple suggestion for the Democrats regarding the economy: allow those congressmen and senators to who oppose the stimulous to refuse it on behalf of their states and their districts, and let the voters judge them.

Secure SmartPhone? No Such thing

iPhoneToday’s CNN reports that President Barack Obama will supposedly get a secure smartphone that would be similar to his Blackberry.  The Sectera Edge, made by General Dynamics, has already received a seal of approval from the National Security Agency.  There is only one problem: either it’s not that smart or it’s not that secure.  You can have either one, but you can’t have both.  Smartphones are those phones that can provide some form of general purpose computing function.  It is that function that is subject to abuse.  While it is possible to develop and provide a general purpose computing function that is perhaps even provably secure, it will also be provably useless.

Another problem with the Sectera Edge is that it lacks the ecosystem that Mr. Obama may be used to with the Blackberry, or others might be used to with the iPhone.  I imagine that very few applications have actually been written outside of GD.  Looking at the iPhone, only a fraction of the apps for the iPhone are developed by Apple.

What’s the cure for Steve Jobs’ Illness?

AppleA lawsuit?  That is what some shareholders are rumoured to be considering, because they feel as though they were kept in the dark about the struggling CEO’s health.  While Jobs is known to be an aggressive man in many respects, his health is something he may have very little control over, as we probably know lots less than we don’t about the human body.

One thing we do know is that stress isn’t good.  And would could be more stressful than having to worry, not only about one’s continued survival, but also about having answer depositions about that subject?  What if such a lawsuit prevails?  Would it mean that it is now tortous to become ill or to simply to be optimistic about one’s own chances?

Many AAPL shareholders have done remarkably well, thanks to Jobs.  The least we can do is let the man deal with his illness in peace.